4n THE EXCELLENCY OF DEAivr. rrr. The bread broken, and the wine poured out in the Lord's supper, distinctly represent the bedy of Christ broken on the cross for our sins, and his blood poured out asan atoning sacrifice: and the actions of eating and drinking do as evidently hold forth our partaking of the blessings purchased by the blood and death of the Son of God, This rite also solemnizes and confirms the covenant of grace, which God hath-made with us through his Son Jesus Christ, by our hearty consent thereto, which is expressed by eating anddrinking in his presence, and at his table. IV. " The Son of God, who was the real Mediator of the covenant of grace, through all former dispensa- tions, has condescended to become the visible Mediator of this dispensation. So saith my text, " he is the Mew diator of this better covenant." I-Ie began his office of mediation between God and man indeed in those early counsels and transactions with God the Father, before the world was made, which are called the covenant of redemption, and of which you have heard in a former discourse ; He appeared in the Old Testament in the form of God ; and though he was sometimes called the angel ofthe Lord, and the angel of his presence, yet he often appeared as God himself, as Jehovahdwelling in a cloud ofglory, in light or flame : and as hewas one with the Father, so in his visible appearances he represented God, even the Father, both to the patriarchs and to the Jews, in his grandeur and majesty, as well as his mercy. But in this last dispensation, he appears visibly and plainly as the one Mediator between God and man, when he discovers himself as " the Son of God, and as the n ani Christ Jesus;" John iii. 16, And so St. Paul more expressly speaks in 1 Tim. ii. 5, The Lord Jesus in the course of his ministry, and especially at the end of it, gave some notices that he was our Mediator with God, and that he came to give his life as a, ransom for sinners, and to make=ipeace with his blood : Before he died and rose again, and ascended, he gave us a pattern pfhis pleading with the Father, in the seventeenth chap- ter of the gospel of John ; and he appears now as St. Paulrepresents him, as our Mediator and Intercessor in his human nature, before the throne of God. Moses the mediator of the Jewish covenant, with all his viatica
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